Is it common to get 26 rejections and just 1 offer? How to fix it? How do I know what to fix?
Did you accept or reject the offer?
Accepted it as I was tired interviewing
My ratio is 16 rejections to 4 selections. Only 1 of those offers were from a good company.
That’s a lot, but I feel like you took a shotgun approach and didn’t actually do the needful for any one role.
How do I know what went wrong? None these recruiters give any feedback. I am in ML/CV field. No FAANG. Have a PHD and 4 years exp
Did you feel like they went well?
It’s hard to say without more context/info. GENERALLY, if you are making it to on-sites, but not sealing the deal it’s probably something about what you’re saying (or not saying). Also know interviewing can be a very blunt instrument. I have 7 YOE and I did a phone screen at amazon recently for an end role. The person interviewing me was a fresh college grad with ~1 yr of experience. He was 10 minutes late, asked random questions which I had to spend significant effort clarifying, and this resulted in me not moving into the next round. That’s the first time I’ve not made it past the phone screen in 5 years.
Yes- few of my rejections are exactly based on this situation. 1 yr grad school student questions are very difficult to understand.
Besides really knowing your shit, the best thing you can do is learn to answer technical questions the “right” way. They will ask you ambiguous questions. Ask clarifying questions, confirm your assumption, talk through your thought process in a stream of consciousness sort of way. Obviously don’t swear, be overly awkward/shy, smile, etc.
I feel the rejections are based on very weird reasons in ML field bc the interviewers mostly don’t know what this role is supposed to do. Except hiring manager and immediate few members, rest are clueless and the part of the deciding factor.
I’m not too heavily in the ML field. In the software dev world, a lot of the industry standard interview process is pretty archaic and standardized. The fact that your field is so (relatively) new could be a contributing factor to the lack of consistency. Or you’re just not that great. 🤷♀️
Ml is created by managers trying to create Terminator or whatever
90% of industry ML work is nothing more than very careful large scale software engineering. is there any chance you sound too much like an academic who can’t turn ideas into code and then money?
if you’re applying for Machine Learning Engineer, it’s extremely important to be good at software. if you’re applying for Data Scientist, coding doesn’t matter as much, but it sounds like you’re applying for ML Eng, for which i very very strongly recommend reading this: http://martin.zinkevich.org/rules_of_ml/rules_of_ml.pdf
Just by reading what you've written it sounds like you are articulate. Admitting to 26 rejections sounds like you are honest as well. Maybe newbie interviewers not being able to appreciate articulated honesty is what's going on. Wild guess based on the thread.
Really? 26 times the interview loop was messed up? Nearly all the major tech companies are heavily invested in / depend on data science /ml, the process can’t be that broken.
Nearly every company is also heavily invested in software development as well and that selection process is fairly broken so your logic is not sound.
Are you interviewing for jobs that you’re not qualified for? Can you stand behind your resume? Or, it could be your presence/communication style and/or confidence. When you watch yourself on video, what stands out to you?
I have actually thought about this a lot. And here is the challenge. - all ML/ cv roles are so similar with generic terms it’s very difficult to understand what the position will actually. I have actually tried to manage this better if I had a hiring manager phone interview. But typically phone interviews are random dudes who are told to test coding and will have no information about the team you are interviewing for - so you get only general idea - I interviewed at 3 companies where after my on site, recruiters and hiring managers were very pleased by me and they realized they actually needed to fix the job position it self as they realized that’s not what they actually need- which was kinda of irritating
I actually love you idea of video myself to see my style- I’ll try that out and have my friends in eng review it
No, it’s not common to get rejection 26 times independent of the job/context.
Agree .. you need to LC more and take mock interviews with a friend/spouse .. instead of using actual companies for it.